Boy Scouts offer help in Joplin

Members of a local Boy Scouts of America troop recently had an experience they will not soon forget.

Five members of local Troop 114 -- including four leaders and one Scout -- joined more than 1,000 of their peers and leaders from various states Aug. 5-7 in a project to help the Joplin School District clean up, recover and prepare for the new school year following the devastating May 22 tornado.

Troop 114 Scoutmaster Scott Flater, said he and assistant scoutmasters David Bailey, Austin Bailey and Aaron Houser, along with Scout Jarrett Lyon, made the trip.

Being a local troop, Flater said he and the other members accepted the duty of operating the dining facility at the Frank Childress Scout Reservation just south of Joplin, which served as the Scout headquarters during the project.

Flater said he and the other members of Troop 114 who helped out appreciated the opportunity. Although they took on a support role, the youngsters were "glad to help out in whatever way necessary to help the event go off without problems."

"We provided support, and that's OK with us," he said. "You can't send 800 to 900 people down there to work all day and not feed them. Since we were local, and we knew the place, we went ahead and took that."

Hundreds of other Scouts who joined in the service project visited 16 different locations in town to perform such tasks as grounds clean-up. Working directly with teachers and school officials, they had numerous assignments, including working on playground areas, assembly of classroom equipment, cleaning, and distributing new supplies to classrooms.

Flater said troops from as many as eight different states, including South Dakota, Colorado, Illinois and Oklahoma, traveled to the Southwest Missouri city to help.

With the assistance of Ozark Trails Council Commissioner John View, the five local scouters cooked, served and cleaned up for the hundreds of scouters "who came to assist Joplin get a little more back on her feet," Flater said.

"We were able to serve Saturday morning breakfast to the entire group assembled in 23 minutes," he said. "Of course, cleanup took several hours more until we got ready for the next meal to prepare."

The local scouters started cooking and preparing breakfast for the scouters at 6 a.m. After that meal was served, they began cleaning up and had only a short break in between meals before they had to begin preparing the next one, Flater said.

Flater called the experience "challenging, but really neat."

"The Scouts did not complain once about anything they were asked to do," he said. "They worked well together."

Despite the triple-digit temperatures troops encountered that weekend and the vast number of youngsters and leaders present, Flater said there were no heat-related problems. However, he said hydration was a concern for everyone that weekend.

On Saturday afternoon, the local troop had some extra time and made deli sandwiches that were distributed to everyone working on-site that day so they did not have to return to headquarters to eat lunch, Flater said.

Flater said all the Scouts and leaders who participated in the project contributed about 6,000 man-hours of work. He said it would take two people three years to generate that amount of man-hours.

"A group like that can do it in a weekend," he said.